Market recap: Stocks ended mixed in another thin, choppy session, despite the expiration of monthly options, concluding the worst weekly decline for each of the three major indexes since September. As political uncertainty reigns in Europe and the U.S., investors showed little interest in taking a strong stand ahead of the weekend. Advancers and decliners finished nearly even on the NYSE.

It is not going Kaboom. It is facing up to reality. The Eurozone as a whole carries less sovereign debt then the US. The pigs know that they are fair worse off without the Euro than with it and they will eventually suck it up and cut government spending. Then their people will be forced to get real jobs and create wealth. How is that a bad thing?

Yes, the US is in worse shape than Europe. Neither Europe nor US has a plan. US currently prints or 'borrows' 40% of all spending. Any interest rate spike (even to normal levels), and US prints an amount equal to total federal revenues every year.

I spend way too much time copying and pasting business articles into my database. I follow Euro news and oil speculation stories. It is fun to anticipate what will happen next and then see it in print.

You cannot maintain a status quo in financial markets (unless you are some huge government agency that is constantly buying a basket of stocks to keep us out of anything resembling a depression. You can have total unemployment , but not a stock market crash.) Have you ever considered how flat lined the NYSE stock prices have been since 2008? Go ahead, do the math. Someone is gaming the system.

Not many seem to point out that this picture is catastrophically upside down. Nobody cares if countries go bust and what that may mean to the people living in those countries, what all the concern is about is for the banks not to go bust. The reason why everybody is concerned about the survival of the banks is because they are insanely interconnected with credit default swaps. That's what creates the horrific domino effect. The most important thing is to push a huge "reset button" and bring the banks down to reality again, somehow reduce the huge moneybubble that was created based on empty promises. That would reduce systemic risk and the economy could cool off. Somebody has to take losses to accomplish that but one thing is very clear the taxpayers should not be the ones paying for insane derivative deals, not with bailouts or via inflation.Yes government spendings have to be reduced and austerity programs put in place BUT the main focus HAS to stay on the banks and how they will deal with the bubble that they created.

I agree. At most of the recent failures in government systems or businesses and financial companies, we have these insane and complicated financial instruments designed so that people can gamble and leverage and make money out of thin air. It has nothing to do with anything but making money. Not supporting business that want to grow. We need to get back to basics. Invest in companies and people that you beleive in. Use wealth to create more real wealth and real jobs.

Exactly. CDS/Derivatives are such a unbelievably irresponsible economic factor that they have to be extremely regulated or simply gotten rid of. They are nothing but a bunch of papers based on other papers which bring ponzi scheme type profits to a very small amount of people while in return they can melt down the world economy affecting billions of people! Is anybody in charge here? I truly hope that Merkel is able to put the Banks in place.